Happy Halloween

Castle Rock Ward Halloween party

I hope you all had a great Halloween weekend and watched a plethora of scary movies.  ( The pg-13 ones ).  The Halloween night in Longview WA really wasn't the craziest of things, but we did eat vast amounts of candy and stabbed pumpkins instead of carving them.  Each of our parents sent us bags of candy for this great holiday.  We put all of our candy outside in a bowl for trick-or-treaters to take... within 15 minutes those buggers had taken most of the whole bowl.  AND WE KNOW FOR SURE THERE WERE ONLY ABOUT 10 PEOPLE THAT CAME BY!  For Halloween we were supposed to come in at 6 and weekly plan for the remainder of the day which was difficult..  but we did so.  Then, created a "rave" video with glow sticks that Elder Browns mother sent himJ  This new transfer has been interesting.  Castle Rock typically shares elders with another ward for a reason.  We have been doing all we can to get things going again.  The night before transfers Elder Brown and I sat in Red Lobster with the Steele family chowing on cheddar bay biscuits and lobster scampi when our Mission President called.  Elder Brown said "Oh no! It’s President, you answer"  I said, "No, you should answer,  I have a feeling it’s for you" ( which I really didn’t, I was just enjoying my food thoroughly ).  It turns out it was for him and President made an emergency transfer change tonight and wants Elder Brown to be a new trainer.  He has only been out 6 weeks!!  I bought him some diapers for his soiled pants shortly after.
Elder Furlow is my new companion and he is awesome.  He is straight from the swamp-lands of Louisiana.  He brought many spices from his homeland to spice up our mac and cheese.  Along with spices he brought stinky cologne, stinky farts and many laughs.  We spent our MTC experience together.   Most of his mission has been spent in Portland, very different from Castle Rock.  The spaced out homes and forestland climate is different for him. Yesterday we had a grand experience.   It was stake conference this weekend and we neglected to fuel up our car before Sunday due to the hustle and bustle of Halloween and stake conference.  Castle Rock is 20 minutes away from where we live and we had no dinner appointment for Sunday.  No gas, 20 minutes from home , and my stomach was upset from Halloween candy and Fuji Teriyaki Chicken the night before.  The situation really was bad.  We just tracted on our long walk home for most of the evening and came home for some Mac & cheese to end our Sunday night.  But for a moment, we decided we were stranded in Castle Rock with no gas and irritable bowels and it made for a good story. This week we were teaching Sister Bradley about Jesus Christ and the atonement.  We showed a video of his death and resurrection when she said "I think I need to come back to church and worry more about what God thinks instead of what others think."  A
couple cool things to learn from that... 1) The Savior really is the only one that can cure all wounds, heal all scars, and in turn strengthen us.  2) The Holy Ghost does the real teaching.  We simply taught what we felt was right.  Sister Bradley was taught by the Holy Ghost what she needed to do.